Government must impose limits upon immigration

GENERAL election took place just a few weeks ago but already it seems to belong to a different political era.

PUBLISHED: PUBLISHED: 00:00, Sat, Jun 26, 2010

Tax rises that were all but ruled out during the campaign are now going ahead, while government policies have come to depend not on a clear mandate obtained from voters but on compromises hammered out between two governing parties.

With coalition politics that is inevitable. But there are some issues upon which the dominant Conservative presence in the coalition should not give ground.

One of those is immigration. The lax approach advocated by the Lib Dems was decisively rejected by the electorate, costing them many votes. So it is deeply disturbing to read reports that some Conservatives are pondering the abandonment of plans for a cap on non-EU migrant workers.

Poll after poll shows that most people would like a far tougher immigration policy than was offered by the Tories at the election. But David Cameron’s readiness to strictly limit non-EU migration to the tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands was the best offer voters were given by any of the main parties.

With unemployment having soared and jobs in short supply, any back-pedalling now would constitute a serious breach of faith. Gordon Brown once promised British jobs for British workers but failed to deliver. And look what happened to him.

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